7 ms·

Internal combustion is over. There's no future to be improved in it, it's going away. We simply can't afford to use it any more, and it is being phased out.

vardump 7y ago
You're right, but for wrong reasons. Internal combustion engines will go away, because electric vehicles' cost curve will destroy them. IIRC, batteries get 13% cheaper per year, and that means price halves every 5 years or so. Right now 1 kWh of batteries (including BMS) costs about $100. So in 2025 one kWh of batteries will probably cost only $50. Electric vehicles purchase price will simply be cheaper unless ICE vehicles get subsidies. At that point, for economical consideration you'll need to have pretty compelling reasons to buy an ICE vehicle. Ultimately even gas station network will be decimated and gradually fade away.
- busterarm 7y ago
  There are still areas where ICE will dominate simply because batteries aren't practical or economical, despite being a cheaper fuel. Extreme environments, heavy machinery, etc. ICE are never going away.
  - DagAgren 7y ago
    And?
    - busterarm 7y ago
      And I directly refuted your argument and this is all you have to say. I didn't even get into the laughable aspect of how 1/7th of the planet's population still lives _without electricity_. There's countries that do have electricity where their energy infrastructure and access is unstable (e.g., Moldova). Most of those places can get some burnable fuel, but I'm sure they'd just love your argument that batteries will soon be the only game in town. The idea of ICE being a technological dead end is a spoiled person's fantasy.
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        I look at it a different way, from a first world perspective, the power still occasionally goes out. As a comfortably middle class American, you wouldn't say "I have a $200K house and it's the latest tech and therefore it must run only on electricity". For the sake of argument, let's say you don't use natural gas or heating oil. You still are not going to say "oh, I won't buy a Honda generator because it's more important to maintain my electrical purity than to not freeze after a storm". Not everybody needs or buys a generator, but there's no trend to eliminate them, and in the big picture, using them is the exception, so it's not what we should be focusing on to cut CO2 emission. So, my opinion is that most people who have a comfortable first world lifestyle in the long run will end up with PHEVs. Not as a transition to all-electric, because it's just as dumb to have a battery that goes 400 miles to avoid range anxiety as it is to have an ICE that makes 400 hp to avoid "acceleration anxiety". All people need is a very small ICE, a very small battery, and a fairly large electric motor. All the arguments about why pure electric vehicles are the future are based on emotional feelings about purity, not logic, I think.
        busterarm 7y ago
        You are making a perfectly reasonable argument, yes. :)
        perl4ever 7y ago
        Except that maybe I'm wrong because big multibillion auto companies are betting on BEVs. Like, Ford and Chevy disagree with me. But Toyota seems to think differently, for now.
      - DagAgren 7y ago
        > And I directly refuted your argument You did not at all understand what my argument was if you think that.
  - sojournerc 7y ago
    Agreed. ICE will also gain a vintage appeal. I can imagine my grandchildren reacting in wonder to my "classic" jeep cherokee dinosaur juice guzzler. There will always be collectors and niche uses for ICE vehicles (e.g. backcountry 4x4) even if they get largely displaced by EV
    - EL_Loco 7y ago
      I wonder what will happen to gas prices by then. Will it be feasible to still drive daily in one, or just an hour of fun driving on the weekend?
    - DagAgren 7y ago
      I'm going to bet that they are going to react more in disgust than in "wonder" at you still owning one of the machines that is ruining their future.
  - grecy 7y ago
    I agree ICE are never going away, but I do think we're seeing the last "innovations" on ICE engines. No OEM is going to sink billions into R&D when they know everything will go electric in the near future. So while you may be able to by an ICE Catapillar D10 or a John Deer Tractor or other machinery in 2050, I'd bet it's engine isn't any different to the 2020 version. Same goes for sports cars.
  - Theodores 7y ago
    ICE technical advances are in the same territory as advances in CRT, film based photography and coiled coil light bulbs. Nobody took LCD screens, digital cameras and LED lights seriously in the 1990's but here we are today where we only use the new stuff. Flat panel yield was a problem in the 1990s, every screen had dead pixels. The magic of film grain and a Pentax SLR wasn't that special, kids today don't even know or care. The warm colours of old lightbulbs are forgotten too. Yet there was amazing analog engineering and precision mass manufacturing with these products. ICE is going that way. The yield on the battery part is being solved, aka range/price. For performance the electric motor has no equal and things like regen are game changing. In time ICE will have specialist applications such as for creating electricity to charge a battery in remote locations, that will be about it. The tech innovation and investment has moved on to electric power trains. The horse has gone and it is too late to shut the gate. Nostalgia is not enough for ICE particularly when the baby boomers have moved on.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      "The warm colours of old lightbulbs are forgotten too" This is obviously not true; when I go to a hardware or home improvement store, there is all sorts of information on the color temperature and purported color reproduction quality of the light bulbs. And "warm white" LEDs that are supposed to imitate incandescent are ubiquitous.
    - busterarm 7y ago
      The kind of batteries that we're talking about simply do not operate outside of the 0-35 degree Celsius temperature range. It will never be "ICE to charge batteries" because the batteries will not cycle in those conditions. North of 16C is optimal. The limitation is the chemistry. If you look at the temperature variance across the planet, you'll realize that there's vast numbers of people for whom batteries are never going to be an option.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  "in 2025 one kWh of batteries will probably cost only $50" https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/
leetcrew 7y ago
the end is in sight, but we're still at least a couple decades away from having ICEs totally phased out. if we're gonna keep building new ones for a while, why not try to improve them?

vardump 7y ago

You're right, but for wrong reasons. Internal combustion engines will go away, because electric vehicles' cost curve will destroy them. IIRC, batteries get 13% cheaper per year, and that means price halves every 5 years or so. Right now 1 kWh of batteries (including BMS) costs about $100. So in 2025 one kWh of batteries will probably cost only $50. Electric vehicles purchase price will simply be cheaper unless ICE vehicles get subsidies. At that point, for economical consideration you'll need to have pretty compelling reasons to buy an ICE vehicle. Ultimately even gas station network will be decimated and gradually fade away.

busterarm 7y ago
There are still areas where ICE will dominate simply because batteries aren't practical or economical, despite being a cheaper fuel. Extreme environments, heavy machinery, etc. ICE are never going away.
- DagAgren 7y ago
  And?
  - busterarm 7y ago
    And I directly refuted your argument and this is all you have to say. I didn't even get into the laughable aspect of how 1/7th of the planet's population still lives _without electricity_. There's countries that do have electricity where their energy infrastructure and access is unstable (e.g., Moldova). Most of those places can get some burnable fuel, but I'm sure they'd just love your argument that batteries will soon be the only game in town. The idea of ICE being a technological dead end is a spoiled person's fantasy.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      I look at it a different way, from a first world perspective, the power still occasionally goes out. As a comfortably middle class American, you wouldn't say "I have a $200K house and it's the latest tech and therefore it must run only on electricity". For the sake of argument, let's say you don't use natural gas or heating oil. You still are not going to say "oh, I won't buy a Honda generator because it's more important to maintain my electrical purity than to not freeze after a storm". Not everybody needs or buys a generator, but there's no trend to eliminate them, and in the big picture, using them is the exception, so it's not what we should be focusing on to cut CO2 emission. So, my opinion is that most people who have a comfortable first world lifestyle in the long run will end up with PHEVs. Not as a transition to all-electric, because it's just as dumb to have a battery that goes 400 miles to avoid range anxiety as it is to have an ICE that makes 400 hp to avoid "acceleration anxiety". All people need is a very small ICE, a very small battery, and a fairly large electric motor. All the arguments about why pure electric vehicles are the future are based on emotional feelings about purity, not logic, I think.
      - busterarm 7y ago
        You are making a perfectly reasonable argument, yes. :)
        perl4ever 7y ago
        Except that maybe I'm wrong because big multibillion auto companies are betting on BEVs. Like, Ford and Chevy disagree with me. But Toyota seems to think differently, for now.
    - DagAgren 7y ago
      > And I directly refuted your argument You did not at all understand what my argument was if you think that.
- sojournerc 7y ago
  Agreed. ICE will also gain a vintage appeal. I can imagine my grandchildren reacting in wonder to my "classic" jeep cherokee dinosaur juice guzzler. There will always be collectors and niche uses for ICE vehicles (e.g. backcountry 4x4) even if they get largely displaced by EV
  - EL_Loco 7y ago
    I wonder what will happen to gas prices by then. Will it be feasible to still drive daily in one, or just an hour of fun driving on the weekend?
  - DagAgren 7y ago
    I'm going to bet that they are going to react more in disgust than in "wonder" at you still owning one of the machines that is ruining their future.
- grecy 7y ago
  I agree ICE are never going away, but I do think we're seeing the last "innovations" on ICE engines. No OEM is going to sink billions into R&D when they know everything will go electric in the near future. So while you may be able to by an ICE Catapillar D10 or a John Deer Tractor or other machinery in 2050, I'd bet it's engine isn't any different to the 2020 version. Same goes for sports cars.
- Theodores 7y ago
  ICE technical advances are in the same territory as advances in CRT, film based photography and coiled coil light bulbs. Nobody took LCD screens, digital cameras and LED lights seriously in the 1990's but here we are today where we only use the new stuff. Flat panel yield was a problem in the 1990s, every screen had dead pixels. The magic of film grain and a Pentax SLR wasn't that special, kids today don't even know or care. The warm colours of old lightbulbs are forgotten too. Yet there was amazing analog engineering and precision mass manufacturing with these products. ICE is going that way. The yield on the battery part is being solved, aka range/price. For performance the electric motor has no equal and things like regen are game changing. In time ICE will have specialist applications such as for creating electricity to charge a battery in remote locations, that will be about it. The tech innovation and investment has moved on to electric power trains. The horse has gone and it is too late to shut the gate. Nostalgia is not enough for ICE particularly when the baby boomers have moved on.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    "The warm colours of old lightbulbs are forgotten too" This is obviously not true; when I go to a hardware or home improvement store, there is all sorts of information on the color temperature and purported color reproduction quality of the light bulbs. And "warm white" LEDs that are supposed to imitate incandescent are ubiquitous.
  - busterarm 7y ago
    The kind of batteries that we're talking about simply do not operate outside of the 0-35 degree Celsius temperature range. It will never be "ICE to charge batteries" because the batteries will not cycle in those conditions. North of 16C is optimal. The limitation is the chemistry. If you look at the temperature variance across the planet, you'll realize that there's vast numbers of people for whom batteries are never going to be an option.
perl4ever 7y ago
"in 2025 one kWh of batteries will probably cost only $50" https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/

leetcrew 7y ago

the end is in sight, but we're still at least a couple decades away from having ICEs totally phased out. if we're gonna keep building new ones for a while, why not try to improve them?